The S&P 500 rose less than 0.1 percent to 1,380 at 4 p.m.
in New York, after gaining as much as 0.4 percent earlier in the
trading session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.23
point, or less than 0.1 percent, to 12,815.16.

“The last month has been very weak for the market,”
Robert Stimpson, a money manager at Akron, Ohio-based Oak
Associates Ltd., which oversees about $850 million, said in a
phone interview. “The political concerns in Europe and the U.S.
add volatility on a daily basis.”

Fewer than 292 million shares of New York Stock Exchange-listed companies changed hands on the NYSE, the least in
Bloomberg data going back to 2003, as the Big Board canceled
trading and closing auctions in 216 securities after an outage
in a computer that matches orders and processes transactions.

Fiscal Cliff

U.S. stocks had their biggest weekly decline in five months
as President Barack Obama’s re-election set up a budget showdown
with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The S&P
500 fell 2.4 percent over five days last week, and has lost 5.3
percent since Oct. 18. The index is up 9.7 percent for the year
through today.

If Congress doesn’t act by the end of the year, $607
billion in automatic spending cuts and tax increases are
scheduled to take effect starting in January. Obama invited the
top Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to the White
House this week to begin talks on a plan to avert the so-called
fiscal cliff.

“What people don’t like in markets is uncertainty,” said
Gilles Sitbon, who helps oversee $1.9 billion at Sycomore Asset
Management in Paris. “People are waiting for one thing that
could make the market go down. People are ready to pull the
trigger. And if nothing happens, then you can get a grind
higher. It’s confidence building.”

‘Large Risks’

Euro-area finance ministers met in Brussels today. While
the ministers will probably not approve 31.5 billion euros ($40
billion) of financial aid to Greece, they will agree to prevent
the country from defaulting on 5 billion euros of bills that
mature on Nov. 16, a European official said on Nov. 9.

The so-called troika that oversees euro-area Greece’s
bailouts said it sees “very large risks” to the Greek program,
according to a draft report obtained by Bloomberg News. The
troika comprises the European Commission, the European Central
Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Phone and health-care stocks rose the most among 10 groups
in the S&P 500 today, while utilities and technology companies
had the biggest declines. United Technologies Corp. increased
1.5 percent to $76.95. AT&T Inc. advanced 1 percent to $33.87.

Jefferies gained 14 percent to $16.27. Leucadia, the
largest shareholder of Jefferies with a 29 percent stake, agreed
to buy the the portion of the company it doesn’t already own for
about $2.8 billion. Investors will receive 0.81 Leucadia share
for each Jefferies share they own, the companies said today in a
statement, valuing the entire company at $3.59 billion. New
York-based Leucadia fell 3 percent to $21.14.

Titanium Metals

Titanium Metals surged 43 percent to $16.50. Precision
Castparts, the maker of metal forgings for jet engines, agreed
to buy Texas billionaire Harold Simmons’s Titanium Metals for
$2.9 billion in its largest acquisition in almost two decades.
Titanium Metals’ stockholders will get $16.50 a share, 44
percent more than the Dallas-based company’s closing price on
Nov. 8, according to a statement after markets closed on Nov. 9.
Precision Castparts added 4.9 percent to $179.69.

Sherwin-Williams Co. climbed 5.8 percent, the biggest gain
since September 2011, to $149.06. The largest U.S. paint
retailer agreed to acquire closely held Consorcio Comex SA de CV
for about $2.34 billion including debt to gain Mexico’s largest
paint maker as housing demand improves.

Gilead Sciences Inc. rose 14 percent to $73.93 after a
combination of its experimental hepatitis C therapies cleared
the virus in 100 percent of patients in a trial. Gilead, the
world’s largest maker of HIV medicines, is among several
drugmakers racing to develop new hepatitis C treatments that act
faster with fewer side effects than the current standard of
care.

Homebuilders Tumble

All 11 members in the Supercomposite Homebuilding Index
dropped, with D.R. Horton Inc. losing 5.8 percent to $19.40. The
largest U.S. homebuilder by volume fell after CEO Donald Tomnitz
cautioned during a conference call that employment growth will
remain weak next year, potentially hurting sales of new houses.

Atlanta-based Beazer Homes USA Inc., which isn’t part of
the S&P index, declined 17 percent to $13.77 after reporting a
wider-than-estimated fourth-quarter loss.

The S&P 500 Utilities Index fell for the eighth straight
trading day, the longest losing streak in 10 years. The
benchmark, which includes companies such as Duke Energy Corp.
and Dominion Resources Inc., lost 0.8 percent and closed at the
lowest level since April.

Apple Falls

Apple fell 0.8 percent to $542.83, after gaining as much as
1.4 percent earlier in the day. The shares have dropped 23
percent from their September high. Apple hasn’t been able to
keep up with demand for the latest version of the iPhone, which
accounts for about two-thirds of the company’s profit.

The New York Stock Exchange canceled trading and closing
auctions in 216 securities today after a malfunction in a
computerized “matching engine.”

The affected stocks, which included such companies as
Travelers Cos. and U.S. Steel Corp., continued to trade on other
exchanges, including the Nasdaq Stock Market. The exchange
anticipates a “normal trading day in all securities tomorrow,”
according to an e-mail to traders.

Recession Risk

“We’re watching the news headlines which will all be about
the fiscal cliff for the next six weeks,” Thomas Nyheim, a
Wilmington, Delaware-based fund manager for Christiana Trust,
which oversees about $15 billion, said in a phone interview.

Should policy-makers fail to reach an agreement on the
fiscal cliff and the automatic spending cuts and tax increases
go into effect at the beginning of 2013, the U.S. would enter a
recession and could experience its second credit downgrade,
according to Oppenheimer & Co. S&P cut its AAA rating in August
2011 after an impasse on the debt ceiling. The Dow alternated
between losses and gains of 400 points on four days during that
month, the longest streak on record.

“Even though the U.S. has already weathered a downgrade
earlier in the process of the current economic recovery, a
second downgrade might not be as easily digested or received by
the markets and foreign investors as the first,” John
Stoltzfus, chief market strategist at Oppenheimer, wrote in a
note today.

Likely Up

David Bianco, Deutsche Bank AG’s chief U.S. equity
strategist, said the next 5 percent move in the S&P 500 is
likely up and advised clients to use the dip to buy growth
stocks. He cut his 2012 estimate for the benchmark index to
1,450 from 1,475, while reiterating a 12-month forecast of
1,500.

“We still believe that the fiscal cliff will be averted
with compromise legislation, but President Obama’s re-election
and a larger Democrat majority in Senate raise the likely amount
of tax hikes vs. spending cuts in the new legislation,” Bianco
wrote in a Nov. 9 report.